The Herald’s kaupapa Māori editor used his NZME work email to pitch a puff piece about his sister – the CEO of the Pacific Business Trust – to other news outlets. His own section was the only one that ran it.
The message came from Joseph Los’e’s NZME work email but he wasn’t acting in his capacity as a journalist. Instead the Herald’s kaupapa Māori editor was delivering a PR pitch on behalf of a publicly funded organisation, the Pacific Business Trust. His November 2023 email to a journalist at another news outlet, which has been seen by The Spinoff, suggested some angles for potential coverage, as well as offering a pre-written feature about his sister, the trust’s chief executive Mary Los’e, and her path from acting on Shortland Street to the upper echelons of business. It would be produced by a freelancer and supplied free of charge, he said. He had a headline in mind: “From green room to boardroom”.
Los’e said he was sending the email to help the trust out with media engagement and advice. He was pitching to a range of organisations, including Coconet, the Pacific Media Network, TVNZ and E-Tangata. It doesn’t appear any took him up on the offer – it’s not normal practice for editorially independent media outlets to accept a pre-written story via a PR pitch. In the end, only one news outlet actually ran a story on the trust, and it was the one Los’e is charged with editing. The Herald’s Kahu section printed its feature on Mary Los’e in February 2024 under the headline her brother had suggested: Mary Los’e: From the Shortland Street green room to the boardroom.
Los’e’s email raises a number of questions about the Herald’s editorial processes. Kahu’s feature on Mary Los’e isn’t flagged as having been provided or commissioned by an outside organisation. Though it acknowledges that the subject’s brother works as an editor at the Herald, it doesn’t mention he had pitched the story to other media while doing PR for the trust. The Herald’s policy on attribution in its editorial code of conduct states that “stories from partners and other news agencies will be by-lined and appropriately sourced”.
Neither was the extent of Joseph Los’e’s involvement with the Pacific Business Trust disclosed in the profile. While his email described his role as helping the trust out with media advice for free, its two most recent annual reports reveal $88,000 in payments to Los’e’s business JLo Consultants: $8,500 in the 2024 financial year when he initially pitched the story and a further $79,500 the year following. Both annual reports declare that Joseph Los’e of JLo Consultants is related to the CEO of the trust. The trust receives nearly all its funding from the government, with a total of nearly $6.3 million invested yearly by the Ministry of Social Development, MBIE and the Ministry of Pacific People.
The Spinoff sent a detailed list of questions to Los’e and NZME. The company returned a one-line statement, attributed to a spokesperson: “We do not comment on employment matters.”
One of the people who Los’e pitched the story to was surprised when it later appeared in the Herald with no disclosure statement. “It was clearly a conflict of interest,” said the source, who spoke to The Spinoff on condition of anonymity. The source said managing conflicts can be difficult for Pasifika and Māori journalists because their communities are often small and highly interconnected. “But that just means you have to keep as clean as possible to be trusted. So you declare anything and everything that you can. That’s also for the community as well. They have to be able to trust you, so you do disclose it. And I don’t think there’s any excuse not to.”
James Hollings, an associate professor of journalism at Massey University, said Los’e’s role at the Pacific Business Trust could be managed if NZME ensured clear processes were in place to handle potential conflicts of interest. But if Los’e had any role in placing the feature on his sister in the Herald, that would represent a clear conflict of interest. “If the Herald knew about his conflict, and agreed to publish the article without disclosure, that is poor judgement and in my view they should withdraw it and apologise to their readers for that lapse. If the Herald did not know about the conflict of interest, in my view that would be a serious breach of trust by an employee and the Herald should take remedial action. In any case, the Herald should explain what it knew and when, if they wish the public to continue to have faith in their editorial content.”
The Pacific Business Trust has made its relationship with the Herald a point of pride. The Kahu feature on Mary Los’e was highlighted in its 2024 annual report, along with a Waatea story that also ran in the Herald under the headline “Pacific Business Trust spreads its wings to hook up with businesses across Aotearoa”. “Our chairman and chief executive engineered these two pieces in order to put PBT on the media map,” the report said. A number of other positive stories about the trust and its work have appeared in the Herald, including a December 2023 profile of its then-chair Paul Retimanu, by the same freelancer who wrote the feature on Mary Los’e, and a July 2024 Herald on Sunday story by Joseph Los’e himself about a business the trust had been fostering called All Stone & Rock. It ran under the headline “Auckland’s newest rock stars”.
Los’e’s PR help came at a turbulent time for the Pacific Business Trust. His sister started her stint as chief executive in February 2023 and soon after initiated a round of redundancies in an effort to address a range of financial issues. Two of the people who lost their jobs, John Faitala and Vahanoa Vea, initiated proceedings in the Employment Relations Authority over the way their dismissal was handled. Kahu printed its feature about Mary Los’e in February 2024. In July of that year, Faitala and Vea won a legal victory, with the authority finding the trust failed to follow proper consultation procedures and ordering it to pay its former employees more than $25,000 each.
More recently, the pair were awarded $75,000 in damages after Employment Court judge Merepaia King found the trust failed to adhere to the Pasifika values it committed to in their employment contracts during the restructure. The trust has also faced criticism from some of the Pasifika organisations it’s charged with fostering, with several business owners complaining to the media about being “left in the dark” and treated disrespectfully by the trust’s leadership.
None of those issues come up in the Herald’s profile on Mary Los’e. The only quotes about her work at the trust come from board chairman Paul Retimanu, and they’re glowing, praising her abilities as a strategic leader who “cares deeply about her team and the business community she serves”. “As a first-time CEO, she is knocking it out of the park and in a very short period has exceeded the board’s expectations,” he said. Some would say the story is pretty good PR.
